Mastering the Market With America’s #1 Loan Originator Shant Banosian | December 2024 Data

Host: 00:00:30

Welcome to Market Advantage, the monthly podcast from Optimal Blue. Tune in for valuable insights from the Market Advantage Mortgage data Report and in depth conversations with industry experts.

Stay competitive and optimize your advantage in the ever evolving mortgage landscape.

Olivia: 00:00:49

Hello to our listeners and welcome to the first Market Advantage podcast of the new year. As always, I have Brennan O'Connell joining me from up in snowy Wisconsin. He'll be sharing the latest data insights.

We'll be looking at rate lock data from December and then we'll welcome the guests that we're very excited about. We have Shant Bonozian joining us from Rate, formerly known as Guaranteed Rate. Brennan, happy New Year.

ave the first Couple weeks of: 2025

Brennan: 00:01:17

A little snowy as you suggest. Some some winter blues up here in Wisconsin, but we've got San Diego right around the corner. First OB Summit coming your way, early February.

You're gonna have to remind me of dates, Olivia. I'm terrible at this.

Olivia: 00:01:33

Yeah, that's right. We have the optimal Blue Summit February 3 through 5 in San Diego.

And I know that many of us, including yourself, Brennan, are very excited for the warm Southern California climate. And even though it's only a few weeks away, fortunately there is still time to register and join us if you haven't already.

So be sure to check out the link in our show notes if you still need to lock in your registration. But why don't we get to the matters at hand, Brennan, how did we finish the year data wise?

Brennan: 00:02:05

Good is the short answer. I'm going to have to take a few minutes and explain why.

I'll say that the headline is that December concluded in seasonal fashion down 8% from November to December.

From a total rate lock volume perspective, purchase volumes dropped 13% and anticipated decline during what is typically the slowest time of year for purchase lending. Cash outs also fell 3% but rate term volumes saw a nice spike.

33% improvement over November is really due to some rate rallies that happened right after the Thanksgiving holiday and kind of the beginning part of December, the purchase decline and that spike in refis actually brought the refi share up to nearly a quarter of all loans. So that was the highest in September and the third highest mark of the year.

But the real positive trend is really when you look at the year over year data. So obviously this time of year is typically a little bit slower for lending.

So I think it's more important to look at not the trend on a month over month basis, but on a year over year basis. And across the board we were up so you know, despite the expected slowdown, volumes were up 26% year over year in total.

And those volumes were strong across the board. Purchase up 18%, cash outs up 43% and rate term refis were up 82%.

And then the real I think exciting data point that we, I mentioned this every month we sort of use it as our bellwether for the industry, the purchase lock counts. So that's just the number of purchase of originations, not looking at total loan amount which that skews the data year over year a bit.

And it's excluding refis which are more volatile. But that that purchase lot count number was up 10% in December.

ble digit growth leading into: 2025

Olivia: 00:04:05

So that all sounds pretty optimistic. How much of the year over year improvements that we saw were rate driven?

Brennan: 00:04:13

spective of where we finished: 2023

e environment year over year,: 2024

So I think it just makes all of that year over year increase that much more exciting and gives good reason for optimism that there's a little bit more of acceptance in the market by borrowers.

Maybe there's some more supply getting infused into the market, whether that's new builds or folks starting to list their homes, kind of getting comfortable with this new rate environment that we're in.

So the, you know the, the rate movement that we saw during the month, the OBMI 30 year conforming rate, this is the rate that's going to be the benchmark for the new futures contract which is launching mid month that ticked up 16 basis points from the end of November to finish the month at just above 6.8%. FHA and VA rates were up as well, 14 and 18 basis points respectively.

And then jumbo rates which again are, we talk about this quite often that they're funding source is different, they're not funded through sort of the agency security typical liquidity sources that the other products are. So rates for jumbos oftentimes move differently, they're not as correlated. Jumbo rates actually fell two basis points in December I guess.

Olivia: 00:05:51

Let's Close out by talking about production mix. Was there anything noteworthy in December there?

Brennan: 00:05:56

I think the theme here is that it's more of the same.

So really what we've seen a secular trend away from Fannie Freddie eligible production to the point where we are now sitting at roughly 50%, just above 50%, lowest figure that we since we've been tracking today. This is the lowest figure that we've seen in terms of production that is Fannie Freddie eligible.

So that the conforming loan bucket and that share has been gobbled up by non conforming loans which are, which are Jumbo and non QM and then FHA at NVA production.

So the govy production in total is now roughly a third and then you get 50% at conforming and then the rest of it is this non conforming, which I know it's been getting a lot of conversation over the last couple of years, but we really are starting to see that volume pick up now to the point where jumbo non qm, expanded guidelines. This is really making up a material portion of the lending market at this point.

And I think that's just a function of borrowers are looking for it and more and more originators are offering those products.

Olivia: 00:07:03

Thanks, Brennan. All right, it's time to welcome this month's guest. We have Shant Bonozian.

He is executive vice president of sales at Rate, formerly known as Guaranteed Rate.

Now he has been rate's number one loan officer for nine years and running as well as the number one loan officer nationwide for six years and counting. He's closed over 40,000 units and funded $10 billion in loans throughout his 20 year career. Sean, welcome to the Market Advantage.

Shant Benosian: 00:07:31

Yeah, thank you both for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and thanks for the nice introduction.

Olivia: 00:07:36

Absolutely. Now, there is one thing I didn't mention that I've seen you mention in a few other forums. You're a proud girl, dad. Tell us a little bit about that.

Shant Benosian: 00:07:45

Very, very much so. I have three little girls, 12, nine and six. And they, they're just amazing. You know, I, I grew up around all boys.

I had two brothers growing up and almost all my cousins were boys. It's been a lot of fun raising girls. Like I, you know, realized really, really quickly how humbling it can be that I knew nothing.

But at the same, I'm reminded all the time, however. But it's amazing. It's like the best thing that's ever happened to me by far.

It's made me a better person and I'm very, very Fortunate to have three amazing girls and an amazing wife as well. And we also added a, a puppy about a year ago and she, her name is Sunny and she's also, you know, more females to surround the household.

Olivia: 00:08:24

Sounds like a great trend.

Brennan: 00:08:26

Yeah, we've got the same dynamic around here. I'm the only male with a two year old daughter and a little, little girl golden retriever.

I'm actually still recovering from the two year old's birthday this weekend. We did it at a little local gymnastics spot and a couple trips on the trampoline.

It's funny, you don't remember how hard those things are on your back and neck until you, you jump on one when you haven't been on one in a couple of decades.

Shant Benosian: 00:08:53

Yep, totally agree. Yeah, my girls are, my girls are pretty active. They're all, they're all actually like, they're super into sports. All hockey players feel.

Hockey players, they do lacrosse, they kind of do all this stuff. So we're pretty busy all. We spend almost every single weekend from the minute we wake up to the minute we go to bed in hockey rinks right now.

So it's a lot of fun.

Brennan: 00:09:10

Yeah, I can imagine. And presumably based on your background, so Northeastern or northeast south sports fans.

Shant Benosian: 00:09:17

Yeah, Yep. They, they spent a lot of times at the TD Garden watching the Celtics and the Bruins were there a lot. They love it.

They're totally into that stuff, I'll tell you. You know, I, I probably would have obviously been into whatever they were into. You know, I would have tried to make some common ground there.

But the fact that like when I get home sometimes, like dad, can we put the Bruins games on or can we put the Celtics games on? It's a huge win.

Instead of nothing against dance or anything like that, but I don't know that I'd be having as much fun at dance recital for seven hours on a weekend. I'll take the hockey games all day long. Just my personality.

Brennan: 00:09:48

Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. I'm still waiting for the day when my 2 year old asks me to turn on, you know, the NBA instead of Paw Patrol. But we'll get there.

Yeah, you get there.

Shant Benosian: 00:09:57

You're good. It's a lot of that.

Brennan: 00:09:58

We'll get there. A lot of learning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So could talk about this the whole segment, but I do want to touch on a couple of areas here.

Olivia, you provided Sean's background. Obviously very successful as a producer for Rate.

I think one area that we, we get a lot of questions about in terms of relationship Building for LOS is what is sort of the way or the best way to approach building out your network as a loan officer, as a broker who's thinking about getting referrals, whether that's the real estate agent, a financial advisor, maybe even attorneys, home builders. There's, there's sort of, you know, a handful of really key folks that you're going to want to have relationships with as an elo.

How have you thought about that chant and approach that in your career?

Shant Benosian: 00:10:42

Yeah. So there's two parts to it that are equally as important.

One is this is a relationship based business and generally he or she that has the most amount of relationships tends to win.

Shant Benosian: 00:10:52

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:10:52

Like it's like it's extremely difficult to make the phone ring or the emails come in or the text or direct messages, however people reach out. It's extremely difficult. It can be very, very costly.

I started my business from the very beginning and I decided to make it very much, you know, referral based, based on working with real estate agents or financial professionals, whether it be a wealth manager or accountant or like, you know, and other, other professionals where like I built a strong network of attorneys, you know, whether it be an estate attorney or divorce attorney or just general practice attorney, like anybody that people go to for advice when making important decisions.

Shant Benosian: 00:11:28

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:11:28

I wanted to be the one those professionals referred to, trust me with their clients.

So I had to learn a lot about their businesses, what their niches were, what was important to them, and then obviously communicate what I brought to the table. And so I worked really, really hard in getting my name out there early on in my business. And I was relentless.

I was out every single day at the beginning of my. And I'm still out every single day by the way, you know, it just, and just communicating, right. I'm out in person.

I was having lunches, coffees, dinners, breakfast, going to networking events with everybody in the communities and the type of industries that I wanted to do business with.

Back in the day when I first started out, I was doing things like BNI meetings and chamber of Commerce and Rotary clubs and networking groups and both professional networking groups and, and just like anything community building, like I was literally just trying to get my name in front of as many people and get to know as many people to get them to, for them to like trust and respect me and for me to do the same. And so I wanted to make sure that if anybody had any questions about a residential mortgage, they thought of me immediately.

It's really hard to do that. And then it's really hard to stay in touch with them.

So I wanted to make sure I followed up with those meetings with email marketing, I wanted to make sure I was popping up in their social media feeds early on and I've continued to do a good job of that. So I just wanted to be relentless with like constantly just popping up in their mind.

When you think of residential mortgage, you think of shot, right? But then the other part of it too is also you have to be a great referrer of people.

So like I also wanted to like people when they come to me and be like, hey, I need something with finance.

Like whether it be I need a great attorney, I need a great accountant, I need a great financial professional, I need a great contractor, a plumber, electrician.

Like I became, I knew everybody in my markets that I was doing business with and I wanted to be a good resource to them because like I believe that givers gain, right? So like the more you refer, the more you get referred back.

Because I do believe that people want to reciprocate and also if a valuable resource to my clients, like I want them to call me anytime they have a question about anything. Like I want them to think I'm a person with answers. So you have to spend a lot of time like really build.

It's not like when somebody asked me for an electrician, I'm like going on Google, right?

Like I'm, I'm actually like, I've known that person, I know the quality of work, I know what they specialize in, the market they do business in, what type of kind of cost structure they're in. So like there's two parts of it in my opinion.

But, but I think to build a really sustainable business, I think a big portion of your business has to come from, from that referral based side because going direct to consumer is very costly, right? Like, and I think it's important but like it requires a certain amount of like recurring overhead and expense.

Whereas like with the relationship side of it, yeah, your expenses, your time.

But also like once you do a good job for certain people, like if somebody refers me 30 people and all 30 of those people go back as raving fans and tell them I delivered five star service and did a great job, like ultimately that's going to keep, you know, keep coming my way as long as I keep doing a great job. Whereas like with the direct to consumer stuff, you know, you're just, you're at it, you know, recurring every single month.

And it just, I didn't want to build my business with that kind of recurring overhead every single month.

Brennan: 00:14:29

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I suppose with the transition that Rate has made or maybe the additional products that Rate is now offering, it probably lends itself to.

I think this is. You sort of move from a transactional relationship to one of more of advisory.

And now with rate offering, offering beyond home loans, you've got personal loans, you have insurance.

It feels like this is a really good opportunity for production and advisors at Rate to be able to sit in this place where consumers are thinking of you for not just the. When they need to refinance or when they're looking to buy a new home, but for other key decisions in their finances.

Can you talk a little bit more about how that's impacted your own sort of personal business?

Shant Benosian: 00:15:16

Anytime a client of mine ultimately needs money, right, for whatever Life throws at their way, whether it's buying a car, sending their kid to school, doing home renovations, you know, everything, you know, wedding, you know, you know, anything life, I want them to think of like, hey, should I call shot?

Shant Benosian: 00:15:33

Right?

Shant Benosian: 00:15:33

Should I call the team over at Rate? And that is definitely starting to happen. You know, you know, we offer the full gamut of residential mortgage products.

We dipping our toes in some commercial product.

We do renovation loans, reverse mortgages, personal loans, home equity loans, and home equity lines of credit, home insurance, you know, other types of insurance as well. And like, we're constantly looking to expand that product set to ultimately, like, anything with an interest rate like, we want to be able to offer.

And so that's kind of the idea behind the name. And then, like, we're even doing great stuff with, like, we've totally gone the opposite direction.

And like, if you go on our Rate app, like, we're just trying to figure out ways to engage our clients. Like, when you go on our Rate app, you can do stuff totally different and have nothing to do with finances.

But overall, like, there's a financial wellness component of it, and there's just a general wellness component of it. It's pretty cool. Like, you know, if you want to whip out like a meditation or. Or like a.

Or like a fitness class or like a quick burn type class, like, you can do all sorts of stuff, and, like, it's really awesome.

So we're just, you know, as a whole, the company, our direction is that we just want to stay engaged with our clients whether they're getting a mortgage or not.

Shant Benosian: 00:16:41

Right?

Shant Benosian: 00:16:42

And that's really, really important that we just stay top of mind to them, and we do it in a way where we're offering value all the time, whether it's again, financial or just general wellness as well.

Olivia: 00:16:53

Have you seen the needs of your target consumers evolve with the digital age? Because I know there's a lot of talk about Gen X wants something different than a millennial and now we have Gen Z on the scene.

Shant Benosian: 00:17:03

Yeah, you know, totally. So a couple things, it is true that more and more people want to do stuff online and less and less over the phone or definitely not in person. Right.

Like, you know, we, we closed, we'll close over 2,000 mortgages this year. And like, I might have had like, you know, seven clients come into the office.

You know, like everybody, you know, would like to get as much done online as possible.

So you know, what's great about that is they can fill out an application, they can upload all their documents, we can actually verify so much of their information without even them being involved anymore, which is the way technology's gone. But what's been cool about that is this, in my opinion, it doesn't eliminate the need for communication.

Whether it's like a face to face like, like this that we're doing right now, because we're doing a lot of those or just on the phone or via text message. But what it does allow is because so much of the qualification can be done digitally and verified so fast.

It allows us to talk more about the advisory side of things.

Whereas, like, I don't have to like wear somebody down and exhaust them with just getting approved for the mortgage and just getting qualified, because we can do that quickly now.

Now I can take that allotment of time then instead of spending half and half on qualifying and advice, now I can spend 10 minutes on them getting qualified and the other 20 minutes or 25 minutes on me just providing them all their options. Because buying a house is more complicated than ever been. It's more competitive and it's, and it's more expensive. Right.

So the, the obstacles and challenges my, my clients face, the biggest ones are that it's really difficult to win because there's a lot more demand than there is inventory.

Shant Benosian: 00:18:35

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:18:35

So it's just hard to get your offer accepted, repeating against a lot of people in most markets. And then the other part is homes are more expensive than they've ever been, truthfully. Their home prices have been the highest they've ever been.

And now we've been in this higher interest rate environment where it's really kind of impacted affordability. And you know, you throw some inflation in there. Not as the house Just more expensive, but the rest of your life is also more expenses as well.

So we're trying to help them combat the effects of higher interest rates with really just kind of helping advise them the things they can do to put themselves in a position to be able to afford a house. Whether it be products, whether it's financial advice, what help help the budgeting, really just educating and informing them.

So that's been, in my opinion, the best part. It's not that people don't need advice.

It's actually allowed me to spend more time on giving them advice and options and direction than before, which is really fun for me too and fulfilling.

And I know it really helps us stand out in the market because so many people just want to say, hey, fill out my application, here's your pre approval, call me when you have a house. Whereas like that's not how we separate ourselves.

Like we really talk about valuing our competition and the way we do it is to help them navigate this challenging housing market and really kind of separating ourselves from everyone else. Based on whether it's showing them the difference between renting versus buying.

Showing them like what that really means for them in terms of wealth creation.

Whether it's showing them like, hey look, you might be going over asking price, but here's what the house will likely be worth and here's what, here's whether that's a good decision or not.

Using some of our tools to help them figure out what a good offer is, helping them understand all the different product availability and options in which they can structure to make the financing work for themselves, not only now, but also the future. Like that's fun for me.

Brennan: 00:20:09

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and it feels like in some ways that the timing of some of the developments at rate really coincided well with what's going on from an affordability perspective in the market where you're hitting a time now where the reality is affordability for, you know, folks like looking to get a new home is as bad as it's ever been, as difficult as it's ever been for first time home buyers. Certainly there's this growing amount of home equity as well. So figuring out how do I tap into that?

So there's probably more touch points that folks are thinking about or want to have with their, their loan advisor, their loan, their loan officer. And so it seems like you're sort of building out the portfolio of ways to interact with them. I know you, you touched on it a little bit.

Some of the different products you're able to Offer.

But from your vantage point, what have you seen as sort of trends for folks who are dealing with kind of like the current market dynamics, whether that be affordability, tapping home equity, consolidating credit card debt into a mortgage. How do you feel like the consumer is sort of reacting to it? And, you know, in effect, like, how are.

How are you, as the loan officer, the loan advisor, reacting to it?

Shant Benosian: 00:21:21

Yeah, great question. So there's two components to it.

Shant Benosian: 00:21:23

There's a.

Shant Benosian: 00:21:23

There's a refinance side and the purchase side.

Shant Benosian: 00:21:25

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:21:25

On the refinance side, to your point, there's more equity than there's ever been before in the United States, I think, saw something like, you know, a third of all homeowners, or I think it was like a third or 40% of all homeowners in the United States don't even have a mortgage.

Shant Benosian: 00:21:38

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:21:39

And then. And at least like in a. I think a third have at least 50% equity. And, you know, we've all seen the appreciation numbers.

Over the course of the last couple years, there have been astronomical sleeping. People with that put down 5 or 10% down payments, you know, four or five years ago now have, like, you know, 30% equity in their homes. Right.

So anyways, so there's a massive amount of equity as home prices keep going up. And the reality is that homes are getting older, Right.

The amount of homes that are 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, the United States, is the highest I think it's been. And so those homes need upgrades, any repairs on top of that, you know, inflation is real.

Shant Benosian: 00:22:13

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:22:14

The cost of the rest of their life outside of their house is also gone way up. So you're starting to see the impacts of that with higher credit card balances, with higher car payments, all that kind of stuff.

So people are starting to. On the refinance side, we're seeing a big wave of people that want to do some debt consolidation, a payoff, some credit cards. Pay off, Carlos.

Pay off home equity lines, which those rates have obviously gone up at the Fed, hiking rates as well.

On top of that, you know, the other part is taking some equity out to do the home improvements because a lot of people can't move because they don't want to walk away from, you know, the house they're in because they, they, you know, when they look out in the market, there's not a ton available or the price have gone up.

So they're better off, you know, staying where they're at, taking some cash out, doing a home renovation, doing some home Upgrades making the house they're in work for them. So you're starting to see a big share of that.

You know, certainly there's been times over the course of the last couple years with rates have dipped quickly. Unfortunately, they've stayed low for a very short amount of time.

In those pockets of time, we've seen some massive amount of refinance activity just in those short bursts like I think we saw over the course of the last few years.

There's about 2 million people that took out rates over 7%, 2 million people that took out rates Over 6.5%, another 2 million that took out rates over 6%. So there's 6 million people out there with rates, you know, over 6% that just took on mortgages.

So a lot of those people have been heavily motivated to refinance almost immediately upon the opportunity to be in it, being there. And we jumped all over that anytime the market opportunity allowed for it.

success, success with that in: 2025

One I think of immediately is, you know, obviously everybody wants lower rates, but like the good thing about, like a market like the one we're actually in right now, here we are, you know, closing the year out. Is that with rates right around hovering at the time of this, at this point here, right, where rates are the average rates like just about 7%.

Shant Benosian: 00:24:15

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:24:16

So the good thing about that is, is that for you, if you are a potential home buyer, right, it does eliminate some of your competition.

Shant Benosian: 00:24:23

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:24:23

So it does actually allow the entrance into the market a little bit easier versus when rates do come down, they come down for everybody.

So there's big rush into the market, there's more affordability for everyone, and there's buying power and excitement that are created when rates come down. So it becomes very difficult to enter the market.

So you're always kind of, in my opinion, buying now and ultimately refinancing the future of rates a lot for it. But for the people that are buying now with higher rates, and let's just say it is obviously impacting their budget as well. For some people it does.

Some people doesn't. You know, we're seeing huge interest in temporary buy downs.

That's been like a very big, very, very big product for us over the course of the last three years. That's something I got to be honest with you, having been in the mortgage 20 years, I never did one temporary buy down until about two years ago.

Shant Benosian: 00:25:09

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:25:10

And then we did a huge glue them which has been massively popular. Permanent buy downs, just great mortgages.

We're doing a lot of, you know, a lot of the first time homebuyer product through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac down payment assistance, grant programs, like all these things that like I never did before.

Shant Benosian: 00:25:27

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:25:28

You know, but we decided like, hey, we have to become an expert at all these products because we have to help as many people as possible into the housing market because it's very important.

Not only is it important because that's what they want to do or else like, you know, frankly they're reaching out to us and say I want to buy a house. So like we have to be able to meet that need. But the other part is like there's a massive wealth creation.

Like all my clients that have been looking for five, six years, three, four years that have been boxed out of the market, like they're not participating in the wealth creation that's happened over the course that time. So it's like if we can ease the way into helping somebody get into the market by offering different products that makes it more palatable for people.

You know, whether it's low down payments, whether it's reduced interest rates or discounted rates based on how you structure a loan, like and just communicating them all the different ways to kind of view the opportunity market, like it's massively important. You know, nobody I can tell you that. Like I said, you know, you read off those stats at the beginning.

I think I've done, you know, close to 40,000 loans. Like I haven't had very many clients call me and say, hey, I wish I never bought this house or I wish I never got into the housing market.

Like that conversation doesn't happen. And a lot of times the people that are the most thankful are the ones that had the most anxiety getting into it.

You're like, I think I waited, you know, for the prices are too high or the rates are too high and you know, is this a good decision? And now they're gained 20, 30, 40, 50% equity and maybe not quite that much in certain cases depending on when they bought.

But like still not getting a lot of phone calls of people saying I wish I didn't enter the housing market. Like usually it's a pretty good reward.

Not just financially by the way, it's also very fulfilling and you know, you're for your family, for yourself, you know, like there's a lot of good Stuff outside of just the financial rewards and repercussions as well.

Olivia: 00:27:03

Yeah. Homeownership is absolutely a key piece of the American dream. Right. And I think that's really interesting perspective.

You know, you talked about adding diverse products, lots of options for consumers nowadays and how important that is today. So let's shift over to talking about technology and data. So there are so many products and tools out there.

How do you help your team kind of cut through the noise and choose products or data sets that really add value for what you need to help your borrowers?

Shant Benosian: 00:27:34

It's ever evolving, right? Like, I think we just try to look at things. It's a good question.

I would say the way I evaluate things is what's easy for us to use, what's easy for us to implement? Like what? Just logical, right? Like. Like sometimes, like, there's some great technology out there, but it's like, super complicated.

And like, we're going so fast and so hard all the time that, like, it's really hard to implement really, really difficult technology. So. So, like, how can we make the process simpler for our clients?

Generally speaking, the easier you make it for a client, the happier they are, right? The faster you can move alone from hello to congratulations, you're a homeowner now, the happier they are.

Like, nobody's ever given me a bad review because we moved too quick, right? So, like, the less work they can do and the simpler and more efficient you can make your communication.

That's the type of stuff that we want to use now. I'd say in the mortgage business, technology's improved more in the last five years than it improved in the. For last my first 15 years.

It's been really impressive to see the mortgage industry finally get behind, you know, all these technology initiatives. It's been great.

So it's really leading to just a much improved client experience, which is ultimately, I would say, the most important thing that I evaluate when I'm thinking about implementing technology. But the other part to it is like, how can we.

How can we help leverage this technology to do more business outside of just a really amazing client experience?

Shant Benosian: 00:29:01

Right?

Shant Benosian: 00:29:01

It's like that ultimately, at the end of the day, is number one, because happy clients bring more happy clients too. But it's also like, the data analytics part is like, we're just like, at the very beginning of that in terms of, like, the mortgage business.

Like, you know, all the different predictive analytics, life analytics, life events that you can monitor for your clients and kind of show up for them. Just like. Just like we talked about all the products that we offer that helps people kind of continue to reach out to us.

Well, that's kind of reactive, right? Like, that's reactive on our end in terms of they have an event, they think of us and they reach out to us.

Whereas with like, predictive analytics, with life events, like, you can actually be reaching out to people, is stuff might start happening or should start happening, and that's like, really, really powerful. So that's like us going on offense rather than being on defense. And, you know, I'm a big team sports person. I'm a big sports versus my whole life.

You have to have a good offense and a defense. It's really hard to win without both.

And so, like, from a data perspective, the part that I'm most excited about is all the future analytics and data that we can use to communicate with our clients proactively and show up for them when they. They need us, whether they know it or not.

Brennan: 00:30:09

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Preaching to the choir, obviously, you know, this podcast is associated with a report that we put out monthly with a lot of data that we see processing about a third of all loans getting originated nationwide. So we love to hear interested clients.

Obviously, Rate's been a good partner for a long time, leveraging data and really unique ways to, I think, put the production staff, the capital market staff in a, in a good position to, to best understand the market Tangentially, I think there is, you know, a question about, like, how are you reaching folks? There's more, maybe more reasons than ever to be interacting with your borrowers. Right.

We talked about whether that's affordability, trying to get into a new home, maybe trying to take advantage of their current equity in their home. There's so many different channels. How are you navigating the different channels?

Whether it's social email calls, how are, how are you seeing that kind of communication evolve?

And back to a point you made earlier, Olivia, Is it different depending on the demographic and maybe age demographic, do you find, you know, certain generations are interacting with content from you in different ways?

Shant Benosian: 00:31:18

Yeah, great question. You know, something I'm definitely super passionate about.

So, you know, I would say fortunately because, like, we've been doing this for a long time now. I interact with a pretty wide audience. So I'm just, you know, one minute I'm talking to a Gen Z client, it's like just entering the housing market.

Like, that group just kind of is finally starting to kind of. You're starting to see the numbers go up in terms of mortgage applications for that Gen Z group, certainly a lot of millennials and Gen Xers.

And then, you know, I could be on the phone with a boomer, you know, so it's like I'm talking to every single type of client. It's really difficult to figure out how clients want to be communicated with. So I believe that you got to figure out a strategy.

You've got to be focused on kind of communicating with all the different ways you can. Now we tend to focus heavily on email, on social media and on text messaging.

You know, obviously I'm on the phone all day talking to clients, but like, I'm not doing a lot of phone outreach. Like there's, you know, it's, it's really, really hard to communicate with a lot of people over the course of day on the phone.

Like, it's so much more efficient on social media. You know, for example, for some of the audience watching here, hopefully you're watching my social media.

I tend to post a lot on Instagram and LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram at Sean Osian.

And so, like when I post a video on Instagram, you know, it takes me, you know, let's just say it takes me 5, 10 minutes to come up with some content. Then, you know, you record a three minute video. But realistically, you don't just record it one time. You've recorded a couple times.

It's not like it doesn't come up perfect the first shot.

Brennan: 00:32:52

We know how that goes, by the way.

Shant Benosian: 00:32:54

Yeah, yeah, it's. Everybody watches the videos and you're like, oh, that person's good on social. You know, you don't see what goes on behind the scenes. Right.

You just see the finished product, you know, so like, as an example, I'll post that video and it will be seen, you know, at this point, like generally 3,000 to 5,000 times on average, sometimes more, sometimes less. That's a lot of views. It will have something like, you know, 24 hours to 36 hours of watch time. So it's truly like working all the time.

Shant Benosian: 00:33:20

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:33:21

Whereas, like, for me to have that same three minute conversation over and over and over over the course of the day, it's like impossible.

Shant Benosian: 00:33:27

Right?

Shant Benosian: 00:33:27

Like, there's not enough people that want to hear that. So I tend to lean heavily on Instagram and LinkedIn. There's other great platforms out there like Facebook and TikTok and all that stuff.

Like, you know, I think doing some sort of social media content's really important. You know, we try to stretch our Content as much as possible. So most of our videos will text out to our partner audience as well as email out. So.

And we're generally sending an email to my database almost every single day, you know, with some form of communication about something we find interesting that we think they'll find interesting. I just think it's constantly important to stay in communication with your audience. Like your audience and your influence matters more than ever.

Like I do believe that over the course of time you're going to see bigger and more like huge originators, right. That are doing a lot of business.

And I think as the market gets more and more competitive and technology and AI drives down the cost of funding, I think some people will be eliminated. I think it's going to be really difficult to stay competitive. You're only doing like one, two or three loans a month.

You know, I think it's going to be really hard in the future. So I think you got to be able to figure out a way to do more business.

And the only way you can do more business is like just have the biggest, you know, as I said, relationships are important, but you can create relationships with people without even talking to them. Like I have a lot of clients that talk to me for the first time and they've been watching my stuff for a year or two years.

They feel like they know like, and trust me already based on the content. So like it, it's, it's very, very important strategy of mine and I think that's the way the world's going.

Like, it's like, you know, that's why there's, you know, I didn't, who knew what an influencer was 10 years ago right? Now like, you know, seriously, like, you know, so like one, there's two parts.

There's people influence influencing and there's people that are being influenced. Right. And like you want to make sure you're on one side of that or the other.

Shant Benosian: 00:35:06

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:35:06

And like I'm in a consumer facing business so I want to be the influencer and I want to be influencing my clients when it comes to their mortgage and housing related decisions.

Shant Benosian: 00:35:14

Right.

Shant Benosian: 00:35:14

And I can only do that if I put some time into communicating with them over text, email and social media.

Olivia: 00:35:20

You know, one thing you said reminded me during your presentation at the Housing Wire IMB summit, which was a phenomenal event by the way.

Shant Benosian: 00:35:27

Thank you.

Olivia: 00:35:28

You pointed out that if you make a video and post it on social media, you're working while you're sleeping because it's doing the work for you while you're unable to be online, which I thought made all the sense in the world, but something I had never thought about before. So great tidbit there. Needless to say, I think the three of us could chat all day about this. But I would love to bring us home with a bonus question.

So our mission at Optimal Blue is helping lenders maximize their profitability so they can ultimately get more borrowers into homes. So the question for you, Sean, in your opinion, what is one thing an originator should be doing today to maximize their profitability?

Shant Benosian: 00:36:07

Ooh, you know, I think to maximize your profitability. I mean, that's a great question. So let's see. Well, I think you need to work on your business, right?

Like, I think, I think you should be evaluating your entire business holistically, right? So many people only focus on, on just closing deals, right?

They're not looking at like their sales strategy, they're not looking at their operational strategy, how they can make that more efficient, how they can work on their branding and their marketing, their business development.

Probably the biggest thing, I would say that to answer your question directly, the biggest thing that you can do to maximize your profitability is increase your client retention, right? So you've got this amazing database that you've worked so hard for and so many people, most people don't even pay any attention to it.

If I was to do, if I was to give you one piece of advice in terms of how to increase your profitability is become a master at communicating with your database of clients, right? That you've already done business with, that already know like and trust you, that have familiarity with you.

Like so many people spend so much time just trying to go and add new partners, new relationships, find new clients. Whereas like, you know, you've got maybe hundreds, thousands of people there that already kind of are watching.

You know, you like you, trust you, that you're ignoring, right? And so don't ignore those people.

Find a way to communicate with them, whether it's the good old fashioned way of phone calling them, if you don't have a lot of those, texting them, making sure you're letting them know how to watch you and catch you on social media to emailing them. While, you know, emails not dead, by the way, boring emails are dead, right? But like good content is still good content.

People will read good emails, right? Like it's.

But if it's like an HTML email that looks like a million people got it, nobody's going to read it, it's going to go delete and then you're going to get unsubscribed. But if it's like good fun relevant content that somebody can put to use, they find it valuable, not dead, they'll open it.

Our email open rates are sky high. So number one, focus. And it kind of even goes in line with what I was talking about with predictive analytics, life events, all that kind of stuff.

Like become a master at communicating with your database of people however they want to be communicated with and you don't know how they want to be communicated with. So communicate with them in all the ways.

Olivia: 00:38:21

Such a great answer and I love that you kind of brought the conversation full circle by talking about the importance of relationships in terms of retention. We opened talking about relationships and we ended that way. So excellent. Sean, it's been such a pleasure hosting you today.

You are welcome back to the Market Advantage anytime. And to all of our listeners out there, thank you so much for joining us. We will see you again next month.